This Guy's "Predictions" for 2016 Are Going Viral — Here's How He Tricked Everyone

Impact

People really want to believe in magic. 

A guy named Pablo Reyes successfully convinced thousands of people he had predicted the future on Facebook. Reyes supposedly posted the following status — predicting multiple world events from 2016, like Muhammad Ali's and Prince's deaths — on December 26, 2015.  

The post has gone viral, racking up more than 125,000 reactions and 176,000 shares.

Unfortunately, Reyes is not as clairvoyant as he seems. In reality, Reyes posted this status on June 12, 2016. 

Reyes admits to faking the status. "I feel like people — I don't want to call people dumb — but I think it's up to the people to kind of make the decisions about what they hear and what they're being told," he told BuzzFeed

The proof: If you look at the post's edit history, you can see exactly when Reyes posted the status. To see the edit history, you can click the arrow on the post's upper-right-hand corner.

Mic/Facebook

Then click "view edit history."

Mic/Facebook

There you'll be able to see that Reyes posted the status on June 12, 2016, at 10:22 p.m. 

Mic/Facebook

How he did it: What Reyes did was quite simple. You can do it yourself

First, go to your Facebook timeline. Then write a status and click the little clock below the status to set a time for it to post. It's simple to set a time in the distant past — even before Facebook existed.

Mic/Facebook
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